A Social History of the Bicycle: Its Early Life and Times in America by Robert A. Smith was a library withdrawal that I have had kicking around for years. I was inspired to read it after enjoying the chapter on bicycles in the Toronto Public Etiquette Guide. The focus of this book is the cycling mania that took over the United States, mainly on the east coast, in the late nineteenth century, and how the public adapted to the sudden surge in riding. Chapters were devoted to the early development of the bicycle; its effect on health (some of it contradictory, all depending on what company the doctor in question was working for); cycling fashions; the bicycle as instrument for social change; amateur and professional racing; anti-cycling sentiment; the campaigns for better cycling infrastructure; and the role of the bicycle in the military. Smith reintroduced the term scorchers for speed-demon cyclists who raced down roads and sidewalks, terrorizing horses and pedestrians. I did not know that this was the term in use at the time.
Before bicycles evolved into having two wheels of identical size, people got around on the high wheels, which were also called ordinaries. It was jarring to encounter the word ordinary so often in the text in use in this specific nominal context. Bicycles with such disproportionate wheels made them difficult to steer and stop, and even the disturbance of a small rock on an otherwise flat road could send a cyclist flying over the handlebars. When bicycles adopted wheels of equal sizes, the steering and stopping problems didn’t end:
“The expert cyclist learned to dismount either to the right or the left and in some instance over the rear wheel–or that was the theory. One is left with the feeling that much dismounting was headfirst over the front wheel.”
As cycling threatened the horse and buggy, horse dealers fell over themselves assuaging the public that the two-wheeler was but a passing fad. In July 1895, Scientific American published:
“The passion for bicycle riding is too violent to last, and in the course of one or two years the horse will resume its place in the interests and affections of men and women.”
But no amount of whistling away could stop the growing number of bicycles overtaking the streets. The horse would soon be replaced by the iron two-wheeler.
I found it most interesting that the modern car shows that we still attend today had their roots in the bicycle expos of the late nineteenth century. High-tech models were premiered at these exhibits and all the marketing and hype that we associate with new cars was developed to push the two-wheeler into people’s homes decades before automobiles came onto the scene.
The bicycle was a channel to attaining good health and was regarded as a liberator that got women out of doors. In the late 1890’s, sex roles were rigidly defined, so women may not have had much free time to enjoy riding amidst all of their domestic duties. Perhaps they had no access to a horse and buggy, yet a bicycle could suddenly offer the freedom to all to get up and go. There was still plenty of quack social commentary about the role of the women and the bicycle, such as:
“A New York medical man told an audience that cycling had come along just in time to rehabilitate the American woman. Until then, he contended, women were in bad shape because their ‘nervous force was wearing out,’ and as one and all knew, the decline of every nation had begun with the debilitation of the nervous systems of its women.”
Laws were adopted to rule over those who rode the bicycle, and it was funny to read about some of the early signalling systems that preceded the small bells that we use today. Many of these laws were never enforced, unenforceable, or repealed without fuss. Most clergy objected to any riding at all, and even a reread of the passage below sends me into titters:
“A colleague said all bicycle riders were in danger of going to hell and virtually certain to do so if they rode on the Sabbath.”
Other rules of etiquette included:
“The Minneapolis Tribune also listed some ‘do’s and don’t’s’ for lady cyclists, including, ‘Don’t ride without gloves, don’t wear flaming colors in the hat, don’t ride a tandem on Sunday afternoon except with a male escort.’ The paper held that two women on a tandem were ‘an invitation to every rude man to make insulting remarks of a personal nature.'”
This book was originally published in 1972, and it shows its age in its use of terms for people of colour (referring to racing champ Major Taylor as a Negro, for example). A cycling advocate that I am yet a racer I am not, so I was grateful to the author for introducing me to the life of this remarkable athlete. I wonder if fifty years ago the more common terms for riders of the bicycle were in fact bicycler or cycler versus bicyclist or cyclist, as Smith almost exclusively used the two former terms. Reading the book now, those particular agentive endings seem antiquated. The book was supplemented with numerous inserts showing illustrations of early bicycle designs, fashions and advertising.